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country and Europe, as well as wilh many gentlemen, who were dis- 

 tinguished for their theoretical attainments, practical information and 

 experimental researches, in all the branches of rural economy, on this 

 continent, and other portions of the globe. 



Tlie kind disposition which has been generally evinced to advance 

 the interests of the Society, has had a salutary and cheering influence. 

 Many interesting and instructive communications have been received, 

 and valuable donations of books, seeds, and plants have been made by 

 generous foreigners, and citizens of the United States. A liberal offer of 

 cooperation has been promptly tendered, in both hemispheres, and great 

 advantages are anticipated from a mutual interchange of good offices. 



A library of considerable extent lias been (ormed, containing many 

 of the most celebrated English and French works on Horticulture, sev- 

 eral of which are magnificent ; and the apartments for the accommoda- 

 tion of the Society, have been partially embellished with beautiful paint- 

 ings of some of our choice native varieties of fruits. By weekly exhibi- 

 tions, during eight months of the year, of fruits, flowers, and esculent 

 vegetables ; — by awarding premiums for proficiency in the art of 

 gardening, and the rearing of new, valuable, or superior products ; — 

 by disseminating intelligence, and accounts of the proceedings of the 

 Society at its regular and special meetings, through the medium of 

 " The New England Farmer " ; and by an annual festival, and public 

 exhibition of the various products of horticulture, an interest has been 

 excited, and a spirit of inquiry awakened, auspicious to the institution, 

 while a powerful impulse has been given to all branches of rural in- 

 dustry, far beyond our most sanguine hopes. 



To foster and extend a taste for the pleasant, useful, and refined art 

 of Gardening, the time appears to have arrived for enlarging the sphere 

 of action, and giving the most ample developement to the original de- 

 sign of the Society. 



The London, Paris, Edinburgh, and Liverpool Horticultural associa- 

 tions have each established Experimental Gardens ; and their beneficial 

 effects have been conspicuously experienced, not only throughout Eng- 

 land, Scotland, and France, but tiie whole civilized world is deriving 

 advantages from those magnificent depositories of the rarest products 

 which have been collected from the vast domains of Pomona and Flora. 

 These noble precedents have been followed in Russia, Germany, Hol- 

 land, and Italy. We must also emulate the meritorious examples of 

 those renowned institutions, and be thus enabled to reciprocate their 

 favors from like collections of useful and ornamental plants. An equally 

 enlightened taste will be thus superinduced for those comforts and em- 

 bellishments, and for that intellectual enjoyment which the science and 

 practice of horticulture afford. 



With the Experimental Garden it is recommended to unite a Rural 

 Cemetery; for the period is not distant, when all the burial grounds 

 within the city will be closed, and otiiers must be formed in the coun- 

 try, — the primitive and only proper location. There the dead may 

 repose undisturbed through countless ages. There can be formed a 

 public place of sepulture, where monuments can be erected to our illus- 

 trious men, whose remains, thus far, have unfortunately been consign- 

 ed to obscure and isolated tombs, instead of being collected within one 

 common depository, where their great deeds might be perpetuated and 

 their memories cherished by succeeding generations. Though dead. 



